May was such a “normal” month that we only ate outside the home one evening, and then someone else paid for our meal.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.30 ($2.36 in March)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $9.16 ($9.16)
- Dinner eaten at home: $5.23 ($5.23)
- Dinner eaten out: NA ($7.75).
Our lunches at home average in a fairly narrow band and this month is only a few cents per serve down from last month. Lunches prepared outside the home are up quit a bit from our typical range thanks to a trip to The Country Deli and Cafe Firenzé.
We ate only eight meals prepared outside the home (either mostly take out for lunch). Our most expensive meal for the month was lunch at the Country Deli for $22.65 each.
Our most expensive at home meal was the Bone-in Pork Chop at $14.15 each.
This month, lunches at home cost 17% of the cost of eating food prepared outside the home.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $421.60 per person in May. We actually spent $57.44 for lunches at home plus $81.59 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $139.03 in total.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $239.63 per person based on last month’s low average. We actually spent $195.71 for dinners at home.
This month’s savings from preparing most of our food at home is $246.09 and we had a lot more control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 21 different recipes for evening meals.